A little offshoot given the attention autothrusters has been given (and its deserved, as its the promised help against turrets) but the 2 new cannons that the syck expansion offers has really been exciting me in its applications. Now for the most part this will have to do with the outrider, as i think it will open up some more of the pilots for use and make things abit funner for list building outside of just dash + upgrades and corran or x wings/ b wings.

So the first new one is the mangler cannon, a nifty 4 point upgrade that provides a 3 die attack with a small bonus. now this one for the most part will feel overcosted on most ships that can take cannons, since they already have 3 dice, and turning a hit to a crit for 4 points is abit much. (and range 3 advantage, but no range 1 bonus) however this is a very good upgrade for the outrider, in that its cheaper than the hlc, and more importantly has no range band hole. this allows it to shoot like a falcon, with a small bonus in damage, while being 3 points cheaper and removing a big weakness from the ship. Now the outrider is really the only ship outside of the syck (and maybe the aggresor) that would really want this upgrade, as every other cannon ship is already 3 attack base and unless your really have 4 points lying around that can't go into a hull upgrade they would probably be better spent elsewhere. So in short, it helps outriders, and in concert with the second upgrade, i think itll help the overall meta start to see the other outrider pilots.

The second one is the flechette cannon, and its the one im most excited for. This is a cheaper ion cannon, that gives stress instead of ionization. That immediatly has better application against large ships as it removes options from their dial that turn, rather than in 2 turns, and it also can help against phantoms, with high ps boosting. Most of all, this is the option that other cannon ships outside of the syck and outrider can consider, in part because its 2 points. It can be doubled up on with a couple of ships using the taction upgrade(b-wing and shuttle), making range 2 very threatening against them. It pretty much is the only thing i can think of that makes the stress outrider pilot usefull, and can be equipped onto defenders as a cheaper ion cannon, denying the enemy ship the ability to k-turn and allowing you to get behind him. most any list seeking a cheap control option should consider this, as an alternative to ion turrets.

Again, these might not be super meta-shaking upgrades, but i do like that it adds alot of variety to the cannon slot, which pretty much meant hlc or nothing. (This isnt even getting into the epic implications of a b-wing squadron with flechette cannons followed by a slicer transport. epic amounts of damage would follow)